Fort Lauderdale streetcar plan gets $18 million boost

Will passengers abandon cars to catch The Wave?

WASHINGTON — — Plans to build a visitor-friendly streetcar system in Fort Lauderdale to ease travel to downtown shops and buildings will get a major boost this week when U.S. transportation officials pour $18 million into the first segment of the long-awaited project.

The plans call for a 2.7-mile streetcar loop called The Wave to run on rails embedded in existing street lanes shared with cars.

Construction could begin in 2014, with service the following year.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Tuesday told Florida Democrats in Congress who have pushed the plan — U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston and Rep. Alcee Hastings of Miramar — that the streetcar project will get $18 million through a competitive grant program. A public announcement is expected later this week.

"This is incredibly great news," said Chris Wren, executive director at the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority, where the idea was conceived a decade ago. "This is a huge, positive indication we're on the right track.''

The grant is just one of many financial pieces that must fall into place to get the project built, but Wren said it's the most important piece.

"It's sort of like dominoes,'' he said. "You need one domino to fall before you can get the others.''

The federal grant would provide 22 percent of the cost for one leg of the project, from the county bus terminal on Broward Boulevard to the county courthouse south of the New River. The state, the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, the city of Fort Lauderdale and property owners near the route are supposed to help pay for the rest.

Wren was elated, saying the federal grant was "every penny we asked for.''

Though Uncle Sam has paid out $6 million toward The Wave already, all of that went toward tangential elements, like streetscaping.

Because of the support at all levels of government, Wren said that even if some grants are denied, as they have been over the past decade, he'll keep trying until the system is built.

Many more approvals will be needed, though, and some of them might not come easily — namely, a Fort Lauderdale special assessment of some property owners near the streetcar route.

It's hoped that the federal government ultimately will pick up about anywhere from a third of the cost of the entire project to about half. Wren, who returned last week from a lobbying trip to Washington, said signs were positive that a separate Small Starts grant also will be approved.

The Wave will loop around the core of the downtown, running on Third and Andrews avenues from one side of the New River to the other. The system eventually could be expanded to reach other cities, the beach, Florida Atlantic University's downtown campus, City Hall and Broward General Medical Center.

About 35,000 people work downtown, and 12,000 live in the area along the planned streetcar route.

Local officials hope that residents, workers and visitors will abandon cars and take The Wave instead. They believe that many people who won't board a bus or a trolley will ride a streetcar because it will be more comfortable and follow a well-understood route.

Plans call for 10 solar-powered stations that tell riders when the next streetcar will arrive. The system would operate 16 hours a day, with streetcars arriving at each station every 7.5 minutes during peak hours and 10 minutes during non-peak hours.

Total cost of the system is projected at $142.6 million.

Aside from this week's $18 million grant, planners are looking for $30 million of federal funding, $35.7 million from the state, $10.5 million from the city, $20.6 million from a property-tax assessment and $8.1 million from the Broward MPO. Another $19.8 million would be needed from federal, state or local sources.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group based in Washington, has called The Wave project a leading example of pork-barrel spending. "Wave goodbye to those tax dollars," the group wrote in 2010.

But Nelson, Wasserman Schultz and Hastings pitched the project to LaHood as a way to spur the local economy and create construction jobs.

On Tuesday, Wasserman Schultz called it a step toward making Broward County a "livable community -- one which promotes transit-oriented development by enabling our residents to use a streetcar in place of single passenger vehicles to travel through the downtown Fort Lauderdale area."